Welcome to Bilkent Falls: an advent calendar story

I take a still from my favourite Christmas film: It's a Wonderful Life, and I sketch it. I keep the trees, some cars, the Christmas decorations, and I leave out the shops and the busy street.

Instead, I draw our library and the campus path that leads down to it. In the foreground I draw the children playing in the snow. Max is lassoing the moon, George Bailey style, Charlotte is building a snow man with a zombie-Hermey. I use ink, watercolour, cutting and pasting, glitter glue and white gouache for the snow. For the cars I cut out some of Max's latest pictures.

Blue Island Ceramics

On our second day, we fight back the weather by finding an indoors activity that is such that we'd rather do that than be on the beach anyway. We go and paint pots at Blue Island Ceramics. We're shown into a studio with two big tables and shelves all around, covered in white pieces of pottery. We're told to choose one each. Emma, step-sister in law, picks a milk jug and her daughter, Lottie, a box shaped like a cup cake, then Charlotte chooses a plate, Max a mug, and Bill and I decide we can do a bowl between the two of us, so we can also help (keep an eye on) Max. There was a dog outside, but Granny Gaby, step-mother-in law, mindful of Max's little quirks, has had it put inside straight away so Max is fine. No all we have to worry about is making sure Max doesn't break anything. He doesn't normally, but that's how we tend to react when he's in a new environment which is a bit close.

On the table there are numbered pots of colours. There's a tile that shows how each colour will look once it's cooked. And there's illustrations on the walls. Zana, the owner, shows us what to do. We clean our things first with a wet sponge, then we apply a first coat of paint with a brush, and a second with the sponge. We need to pick, design, get started. 

Overcoming my hatred of Teletubbies through crafts and autism

Well, not quite. But it is a first step.
Before I tell the story and show you the pictures, you need to understand the depth of my hatred. I understand that all parents who have been subjected to them hate the teletubbies. Also aunts, uncles, godparents, babysitters, friends who drop by when it's on, etc. I know. Bear with me. Most babies who can will insist on watching the teletubbies as often as possible. They will make it clear early on that unless you put them in front of those post-apocalyptic creatures who take orders from a shower head, on a regular basis they will be unmanageable. You will not be able to have a shower, look at your email, or go to the toilet. Your life will be over. For a couple of years.

Now what you need to understand is that not only do I have two children, thus doubling the enforced teletubbies watching period, but the second one is autistic and has decided, not only that the teletubbies were his favourite show, but that he would use them as a learning spring board. Basically, the little bastard has made impossible for me even to consider weaning him off the Tubs. He's eight years old.

I have suffered for ten years now. I have watched them in English, Turkish, French, German, Russian, Czech, even. I know all the stories by heart. We have re-created all the sequences involving wind-mills, scary lions, trees with birds on them, flying sheep, etc, with drawings, cut out figures, plastic toys, legos, etc. We recite them on a daily basis. We have learnt much from them in terms of language, science, culture and social interactions. It's been painful, but fruitful.

Last week, we moved on to something new. Max decided that he was going to recreate a craft activity that he'd seen on the teletubbies. He said he would need some paints, green, yellow and red, some washing up liquid, paper, and a straw.
We asked him to make a list.

 So I went and got all that from the kitchen drawer that contains everything we're ever likely to need for crafts. I realised that we're all out of finger paints but for green, blue and orange. So we used that. And here's what we did with it.

Orange

Blue

Rather unimpressive resulting picture

So there you go. The teletubbies are helping our autistic son be creative in a self-directed way. That's something, I suppose.

A lovely day in December.

What a wonderful morning! Max and I woke up early - he could tell by the luminosity that the first snow had come. Proper snow too. The ploughs came around 5.30, and by 6, everything was white again.
Bill and I didn't really fancy going outside, as we were both recovering from colds, so we wrapped up the kids warm, and sent them out to play in front of our building. They took the sleigh and a carrot, and off they went.

Now Charlotte is gone to her gym class, Max to his therapy. I have a pot of carrot soup simmering and some pastry resting for mince pies. Later Max and I will make biscuits to take to friends tonight.

Aside from that the Christmas spirit is well and truly up.
Sinatra has been crooning seasonal tunes for ten days now, our tree is decorated, as is the doll's house tree. Max is expecting Santa daily, asking to have Christmas stories read to him, and putting pictures of Snowmen up on our walls.

Also, the children are in a Christmas band, the Specs. (No, nothing to do with Max being on the spectrum, these are initials. Although I agree, it is fitting). Our friend the fantastic Erin, who organises the Christmas Carols night at our local is giving Julie Andrews a run for her money by having four children sing and play various instruments. Max is lead singer and percussionist for 'Jingle Bells', and he was actually able to rehearse with the other kids, wait for the right time to come in, sing in tune, and not speed up half way through. I'm impressed.

So now I'll just put my feet up and watch the Christmas Glee episode. Have a lovely December weekend everyone!

It's no longer too early for Christmas and my advent calendar's ready!

UPDATE: You can check out our 2011 calendar here. 

So a while back I wrote about my struggles to find an idea for an advent calendar. Then Maggie from Red Ted Art pointed me to her Christmas Crafts post, and there I found something I really liked. Gail from That Artist Woman had made a citiscape, with little boxes on a piece of cardboard, and with presents (or, rather more cunningly, bits of papers saying where the presents are hidden). So I thought it would be nice to try.

Happy Halloween

This is my entry for Mama Kat's Writers'Workshop. 


We'll be away in Cappadocia this Halloween so no trick or treating for us.
As a family we're not particularly attached to Halloween - neither my husband nor I grew up with it, as it just wasn't a big thing in France or the UK in the seventies and eighties. But where we live now, there is a sizeable American community, so there are parties and events every year and we usually take part and enjoy it.


So here's some crafty Halloween stuff in honour of the celebration we'll be missing.

This is a witchy pinata, recycled from a Christmas Angel. We actually made it for an Easter party but everyone commented that it would be better suited for Halloween, so...

It's not always easy to find whole pumpkins here, we usually buy them sliced, and when they're whole, they're often the pale green variety and huge. Last year we found one, so we got carving and Zombie school girl and witch boy were able to take a jack o' lantern to the party.

Finally, no Halloween is complete in our household without Doctor Who monsters. Here are some Dalek cookies Charlotte and a friend made:

Happy Halloween!

I know it's way too early to be thinking about Christmas...

... but I need some inspiration.

Every year we make an advent calendar. Every year it's different and takes some time to make. And it being an advent calendar, it obviously need to be done by 1 December, and not 24 December - a fact that keeps escaping my mind so that I think I've got an extra month to think about it.

So what I'm going to do is post pictures of past calendars (only the past four years - before that, I hadn't yet gone digital), and hope that somebody comes up with ideas!

Meet the Rabbits family!

Back when I was quite small, I loved little people. I had a dollhouse, partly furnished with stuff I'd made out of matchboxes and bits of fabric. I had a small penknife with which I wanted to carve bits of wood to make my own little people. I don't remember going very far at all with that project. But all the time, I was hoping that real little people, finding my dollhouse handy and comfortable, would move in. They didn't.

My daughter never was into dolls in a big way. She never asked for a dollhouse. But our son seemed to love little people right from the beginning. At the beginning he would pick them up and simply reenact something he'd seen on tv. Then, slowly, he started to create his own scenario. The very first time was in the pediatric psychiatrists' office, where he made a mummy and daddy doll bathe and put to bed a baby doll. And then more. Then when he started to go to play therapy, we noticed that he spent a lot of time playing with the dollhouse there.